


True Romance

by Viridian5



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Character of Color, Crack Fic, Cultural Differences, Gen, Humor, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-03
Updated: 2002-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Plots within plots. The perils of Nietzschean romance novels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Romance

**Author's Note:**

> Many of the ideas for this came from a thread on The Universe Hates You e-mail list. Thanks to Kit Mason, Thermidor, Maya, Schuyler, realitycek, and Laura Kaye. Morrigan would like to thank Shotboxer for suggesting something that led to her greater satisfaction.

_His eyes were drawn to her, riveted to her, although her own eyes, so hot a blue that they looked like the very heart of the flame, passed him over once they assessed his importance and level of threat. Her judgment galled him, but he tolerated it. Soon enough she would never discount him so again._

_Morrigan. The sight and scent of her created a fire in his blood. What children he could sire on her. She was a tigress, truly a mate fit for an Alpha. What strength, grace, and spirit she could bestow unto their issue. He imagined his sons suckling at her high, taut breasts. What a ride she would give him, as he clutched at her hips, so well suited for childbearing, and thrust_

"Harper, please, not at the table."

Harper jumped. "Jeez, Beka! You scared me out of ten years of my life! What? I was just reading."

"You were just about to start drooling." She tried to grab his screen, but he kept moving it away from her. "You're not holding out on me, are you?"

"No!" he squeaked. What kind of idiot was he to be reading this thing in the dining room? Damned Roland and his quest for fame, power, and babes. "This stuff is addictive. I wanted to keep it away from you."

"What is it?"

"A romance novel I got from Tyr's quarters."

"Tyr's-- You're kidding me."

"That was my reaction!

Beka looked sly. "What were you--"

"Fixing things, okay? I wasn't snooping; I just saw the corner of the book and it looked... suspicious."

"I'm sure."

"I had Rommie scan it for me, so it's not like I stole anything. Take a look at the cover." Harper keyed it up, figuring that she'd get a kick out of the buff, barely-clad beefcake on display, bone blades or no bone blades.

Then again, she had been flirting with Tyr a lot lately.

Beka hooted when she saw it. "Can't fault Nietzschean taste in cover models. It takes talent to look that intense and pouty in a strong wind."

Harper agreed about the cheesecake on display. "I always wondered how they can stand all that chain mail against their skin. If they didn't depilate before, I guess it's not a problem after the mail rips all the hairs out for them. Anyway, I figured I should read the thing, the better to use it for blackmail, but it sucked me in. I feel dirty in a bad way, Beka. I keep staring at your hips and wondering if they're childbearing hips."

"You're always staring at my hips."

"Yeah, but it used to be for simple, healthy, lustful reasons!"

"Are they childbearing hips?"

"I think you're probably too skinny for those."

"Good answer. Gimme."

"Not on your life. You have problems with addiction. I'm just keeping you safe. Besides, I can't stop here. Roland is about to prove his genetic worth!"

"Gimme."

"You read so slow."

She gave him a lethal look. He handed it over with a sigh and sighed louder as she walked out with a bounce in her step. His tragic look fled once he knew she was gone.

"Hey, Rommie, could you download it to my pad?" Harper asked.

"Of course, Harper," she replied, sounding offended.

"Rommie, you are the multi-talented woman of my dreams. I know you _can_ do it, but, hey, it's polite to ask you to, right?"

  


* * *

Damn, sometimes bridge duty got boring. Boring was good since it meant nobody was shooting his baby up, but still. Bored. Then Harper got an idea.

Would Beka play along? Harper said to her, "Your eyes are so hot a blue, like the very heart of the flame."

Beka's mouth twitched, then she answered, "Your words are graceful, but a man must be more than words or he is not a man," with an edge of aristocratic disdain.

Oooh. It made him hot. "I am the equal to my words, milady, in grace and strength. My actions shall prove it."

"You can try, sirrah."

Tyr gave them a pole-axed look that made it even more worth it. Let him wonder. It would make the inevitable blackmail moment sweeter.

Not that Harper had any idea yet as to how he would swing that, but he was working on it.

  


* * *

_Morrigan writhed as Roland's throbbing rod of manhood filled her again and again, each masterful thrust stimulating her bud of womanly ecstasy, in a rhythm not unlike the one with which Roland had lethally stabbed Vauban, her last chosen, to gain her attentions. She approved his determination and vigor. Approved them very thoroughly._

Beka snorted. "Nietzscheans are such _freaks_," she muttered to herself. Weirdly compelling freaks, though.

"Beka, stop reading!" Harper said as he ran, waving his arms, into the dining room.

"What?"

"It cuts off mid-sentence in the middle of the climactic scene! And I do mean 'climactic.'"

Andromeda popped up in hologram form. "I scanned all the text in the book. It ended there. I thought at first that it might be a style issue but reading for context suggested to me that it was truncated. No Nietzschean would end a narrative without settling Roland and Morrigan's reproductive fates."

"You got sucked in too, huh?" Beka asked.

The hologram looked livid. "Yes! And I'm resenting every millisecond of being left hanging!"

"I'm going to have a little talk with Tyr," Harper said. "I smell a rat, and it's a big one with bone blades."

"Go get him. Settle his hash," Beka said.

"You're not coming?"

"You're the one who lifted the book. I'm an innocent you roped in."

"You suck, Beka."

"Only in your dreams, Seamus."

As Harper left, muttering to himself, Beka returned to the sex scene. Readus interruptus left her so frustrated, and she'd stop once she finished off the scene....

  


* * *

"Tyr, what happened to the last few pages of the book?" Harper asked as he ran up to Tyr in the corridor.

How could such a bland expression look so smug? "What book?"

"The book you had lying out in your room, the one I noticed when I was fixing the room's air filters." At Tyr's continuing overdone look of incomprehension, Harper growled, "The romance novel."

"Oh, that." Tyr smiled. "I tore them out."

Of course he had. "Why the hell did you do that?"

"I knew it would frustrate you."

"You set me up."

"Indeed. Beautifully, I might add."

"Fine. Ha ha, I got yanked in by a romance novel, yuk it up. Just give me the book's last pages. Beka's on the edge of her seat too. Andromeda would be, if she could sit down. She's not letting Rommie in on it because of the frustration level involved."

"I can't do that."

"Why the hell not?"

"I'm not done with you yet."

Like hell. "Oh, you are, Tyr. You so are."

"I think not."

"You don't want to piss off your engineer, Tyr. Trust me on that."

Tyr scoffed. "I'm not afraid."

"You should be. Last chance to hand 'em over."

"No."

"Fine. Welcome to Harper Hell, version 1.0. The longer this goes on, the more I'll upgrade."

Taking a very showy look around him, Tyr said, "I see no difference in my circumstances."

Harper smiled darkly as images of mayhem danced through his head. "You'll know when it starts. Trust me."

  


* * *

Tyr had been in the shower for three minutes when the water started to smell different. He immediately leapt out of the stall but not quickly enough; he could feel whatever agent had been rained upon him drying out his skin and hair. The sink released water containing the same scent, preventing him from trying to wash it off.

"Computer!" Tyr growled. No reply. "Computer! Andromeda, you will answer me!"

Sabotage? It seemed unusually subtle, and the agent used on him felt more uncomfortable, itchy, than painful. Although it was doing unacceptable things to his hair, making it frizz. Still, it would be better to be prepared for war. Tyr quickly dressed in his mail shirt and strapped on his weapons, then stealth walked his way out the door and into the corridor. He didn't hear any alarms.

He did hear something fly toward his back, so he turned and knocked it aside with his gun, but it exploded on impact, splashing him with... Sparky Cola. Another can flew at him and detonated with a soft whumph! to shower him in more cola. Harper had placed charges on them. Down the corridor, the little maniac in question saluted him mockingly, then slid down the ladder out of sight.

Tyr heard a soft hissing. The accursed stuff was eating through his chain mail. He stripped it off as quickly as possible, but it was also so sticky that if he hadn't already kept his chest hairless to better show off his assets it would be now, and far more painfully. Tyr growled to himself, reeking of sickly sweet cola, his frizzing hair sticking to his back.

"Tyr, report to the bridge," Dylan said over the comm.

Tyr fought for a feeling of serenity. It wasn't as if he could have washed himself anyway.

No other attacks followed, but Tyr didn't let himself become complacent. Walking onto the bridge, Tyr noticed Trance looking at him. "What?" he asked. He knew he looked like an undignified mess, but she didn't have to stare so rudely.

"You should hand over those pages before anyone gets hurt. You don't know the kind of mischief Harper can get into, especially with Rommie helping him. Frizzy hair is just the start. It's not fair that we have to wonder how Roland wins Morrigan back."

We. "You read it too."

"They told me I shouldn't, but I wanted to know what they were so upset about. I told myself that I could do it and stay impartial." She got a dark look on her face, a more imposing sight on this future version of the flighty purple girl he'd known. "I was wrong."

"Tyr, what the hell is going on here?" Dylan asked, staring as openly and rudely as Trance had.

"If you don't tell him, I will," Trance said.

"A lighthearted jest has turned somewhat serious," Tyr said. Trance snorted.

"Lighthearted jest," Dylan said. "Can I have more details? I know Trance would be happy to provide me with some."

"I made a... slight miscalculation. I knew that Harper would find and read the book--"

"What book?"

They hadn't shared it with Dylan, then. Perhaps Tyr could use that later. "A bit of light fiction, but addictive. I knew that he would read the book and deduced that Beka would read it as well. I didn't suspect that the computer would show any interest or be angered by the missing ending. All of them are now engaged in acts of petty vengeance against me."

"Which explains what happened to your hair?"

"Harper or the computer put something into my shower water three minutes in. I have also discovered that cans of Sparky make surprisingly effective and destructive projectile delivery systems and have deduced that the little professor's stomach lining must be strong indeed."

"All you have to do is give up the pages. The _right_ pages," Trance said.

"I will not be threatened into compliance."

"No, you'll be ordered into it," Dylan said. "Give them the pages, Tyr. I want all of Harper's destructive capabilities focused on our enemies, where they belong. Get them now."

"You're in a great hurry."

"You haven't seen your hair lately."

  


* * *

Much put out, sticky, and reeking of sugary cola syrup, Tyr looked as sulky as he could contrive as he handed the pages over to Dylan. Harper snatched them from Dylan's hands and started to read. "Are you really so impatient?" Tyr asked, amused.

"Just making sure they're the right pages all the way through."

"Don't you trust me?"

The whole crew gave him an eloquent look. Their distrust would serve them well in other situations, but it annoyed Tyr to have it discommoding him.

Harper eyes flickered from side to side down the pages at great speed. At one point he started to snicker, drawing an annoyed "Seamus! Get on with it!" from Beka.

"Hey! Instead of reading this at a leisurely pace and enjoying it, the way you guys will, I'm skimming at high speed. This is self-sacrifice."

"Spare us. Read."

Finally Harper said, "Yeah, this is the stuff. Rommie, you can restore Tyr's water. All that sugary bare-chestedness and wild hair is giving me bad thoughts anyway."

"Harper," Dylan said.

"You wanna tell her to do it?"

Dylan sighed. "Andromeda, restore Tyr's water to the way it should be."

"Aye," she answered.

"Now you two shake hands, make nice, and swear to never do this again."

"I conceded only because our captain ordered me to. Your tricks didn't cow me," Tyr said as he shook Harper's hand.

Harper smiled widely and replied, "I was only warming up. You got off easy."

Dylan sighed again. "I guess that's close enough. Getting both of you to swear to something probably wouldn't do much good anyway."

"Hey!" Harper protested.

"Rommie, if you could scan these pages for us? Then give us all a copy."

Dylan had read the book? Then why had he pretended not to know, and why reveal himself now? Then Tyr understood. Dylan's orders had more force without Tyr knowing that Dylan wanted those pages as much as every other crewmember did. It also increased the likelihood of getting those pages without worries that they might be withheld in a power play. He revealed himself now to show his planning and use of subterfuge.

Tyr wondered whether Harper or Beka had thought to facilitate their goals by bringing the captain in.

As the others walked away with their prize, Harper remained, rocking on his heels, looking at Tyr. Once they were alone, Tyr felt compelled to say, "That was clever work with the Sparky cans."

"A little something I cooked up. The explosives can be triggered by remote control or impact. And Sparky's dangerous. You ever shake up a can, then open it?"

"I can't say that I've taken the opportunity."

"Don't try it. It burns like hell when it hits your eyes too."

"Yet you drink this substance as a refreshment."

"I'm a dangerous kind of guy." Harper grinned. "You might want to take a shower now that it's safe. You smell so sweet and syrupy that I keep getting the urge to lick you."

Tyr could have played along with Harper's expectations by growling or snapping at him. Instead, he leaned in very close and asked, "Really?" in a low, musing purr. Then Tyr walked away while the little engineer tried to wipe the stunned look off his face and say something in response, putting his hand up and gesturing as if that would start the words again.

This battle had been lost, but the war continued.

 

### End


End file.
